government spending shrinking. and defending on details of your own situation, various tax breaks slipping away. in other words what we're calling the fiscal cliff. a plan to stop it all from happening still alludes washington, so congress has broken camp for the holidays and the president has gone to holiday on vacation. brianna keilar is out there for us in honolulu, eight days away from the fiscal cliff. are there any contacts occurring on this topic between the president and anyone in congress, briana? >> reporter: there is an open line of communication, i would say, with senate democrats, hala. but there is really no substantive conversations between the folks that you with need for there to be conversations between in order to strike a deal. the white house and congressional republicans, and perhaps more alarmingly, senate democrats are not in conversations right now with senate republicans or with house republicans. and this is problematic obviously because in order to avoid the fiscal cliff, you would need